A Columbia professor is being sued after a man's family claimed she swindled him out of $1.3 million in a romance scam. As reported by the New York Post, the money was used to purchase a home in Athens, Greece.
Dr. Maria Karayiorgou is a professor emerita at Columbia University. Her field of expertise is on the genetics of schizophrenia. She has over 15,000 citations in other papers. She met Frank Watrous Hamilton III, a former executive at successful financial services firm IntraFi, between 2021 and 2022.
But Hamilton had suffered a stroke in 2018, having a "debilitating effect on his mental and physical health" and leaving him "vulnerable". The lawsuit alleges that Dr. Karayiorgou should have understood the "frail, vulnerable, and disoriented" nature of the "elderly man" rather than doing the things she did.
So, what exactly did she do? Well, she threw herself into a romantic relationship with Hamilton after they met. The family said in the lawsuit that "Dr. Karayiorgou was embedding herself into Hamilton's life". The psychiatry professor flew to Hamilton throughout several holidays to spend time with him. These included Thanksgiving, Christmas, and both of their birthdays.
And, during these gatherings, Hamilton referred to Dr. Karayiorgou as his fiancée or his wife.
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She Was Apparently Looking for a New House
The professor was allegedly looking for a new home during her interactions with Hamilton. She would apparently constantly request and guilt-trip the Wall Street veteran into footing the bill as a part of the scam.
But it took a few months to convince him. Hamilton wired her $100,000 at first, in April 2022. And then, on May 18, 2022, he ended up paying the rest of the $1.3 million price tag for the Athens house.
Although there was a verbal agreement between the two to put the house under their names, it turns out that Karayiorgou ended up signing the house only in her own name, completely cutting him out of it. And that wasn't the end of the cutting out—after she secured the house, she allegedly completely cut ties with Hamilton.
This is a shocking case. We hope that the lawsuit gets to the bottom of this case.
